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Fast furnace program (total furnace time < 45 s) electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectrometric (ETA-AAS) determinations of total Cr in several clinical materials were carried out in conventional (DABC) and transverse (ZEBC) heated graphite atomizers. Before spectrometric determination, test portions of the samples were diluted at different ratios in appropriate solvents: (a) whole blood (WB), blood plasma (BP), blood serum (BS), and red blood cells (RBC), 1 + 4 in 0.1% (v/v) Triton X-100; (b) urine (U), 1 + 4 in 0.1% (v/v) Triton X-100 + 0.01 mol/L nitric acid; and (c) bone (B) specimens and the certified reference materials after microwave mineralization, 1 + 9 in 0.01 mol/L nitric acid. The refractoriness of Cr allowed pyrolysis at a high temperature (approximately 1650 degrees C). As a consequence, two facts arose: first, isoformation was unnecessary; and second, background correction, independent of use of continuum source (DABC design) or Zeeman effect (ZEBC design) correction, was not required. For these reasons, the fast furnace program ETA-AAS analyses were simply done by automatic injection of 10-microL aliquots of the diluted test portions (or aqueous Cr standards) into either pyrolytic graphite-coated graphite tubes (DABC design; wall atomization performed) or pyrolytic graphite-coated graphite tubes with integrated pyrolytic graphite platforms (ZEBC design; integrated platform atomization performed), using neither analyte isoformation nor background correction; wall atomization in coated tubes was preferred. Under these experimental conditions, the limits of detection (3 sigma, micrograms/L Cr) and the characteristic masses (pg of Cr) were 0.03 and 2.7 (DABC design) and 0.2 and 5.0 (ZEBC design), respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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